Friday, February 26, 2010

This installment of Friday night videos features five artists from Scotland. Belle & Sebastian fans will recognize this fave. This version is sung by Brittany Stallings for God Help the Girl::

God Help the Girl is a Stuart Murdoch musical story side project, which he's been working on for over five years, dating back to when he was touring with B&S for the "Dear Catastrophe Waitress" tour. Filming is scheduled to begin this year.

The next video is from another Scot band, Aztec Camera, which I've been a fan of since 1983 or so. I've listened to their 'High Land, Hard Rain' and 'Knife' all of the way through more times than I care to remember. I didn't see the video for this track from 'Knife' until the summer of 2006, when I became addicted to YouTube::

I love the use of the same iconography from the album art, which I have a soft spot for due to the colours used::

Travis' "Sing" received a lot of airplay in the UK about 5 years ago and was featured in two episodes of The Office, as well as other shows and Adam Sandler's cringeworthy "Mr. Deeds".

They got their name from a Harry Dean Stanton character in Wim Wenders' "Paris, Texas", which was one of my favourite films from that year. I saw it again more recently and it doesn't have the same draw. Here's a live version from the Late Late Show::

This video is for one of my favourite Franz Ferdinand songs, which I love for its Brooklyn references and how it evokes a dreamy state overlaid over a gritty cityscape—my take on my Brooklyn saunterings. I really like the video, which fits the song well. There's some dispute whether the song is in reference to Eleanor Friedberger of The Fiery Furnaces, who is lead singer Alex Kapranos' girlfriend.

Of course, I couldn't have done a blog focused on Scot music without a shout-out to Lloyd Cole. This is a recent live version of "Margo's Waltz" {Amazon.US} from 1992's vastly underrated "Don't Get Weird on Me, Babe."

Here's the album version::

Twitterversion:: #FridayNightVideos with five bands from Scotland:: God Help the Girl/Aztec Camera/Travis/Franz Ferdinand/Lloyd Cole. @Prof_K